Make Believe
by Kentra02
Summary: Trowa and Duo must Make Believe to stay together in the end.


Title: Make Believe   
  
Author: Kentra Shinataku   
  
Anime: Gundam Wing   
  
Pairings: 2+3+2   
  
Archive: http://www.deathandpassion.vze.com   
  
Category: Angst   
  
Rating: PG   
  
Spoilers: Nah.   
  
Warning: Angst, Death, …   
  
Disclaimer: I own nothing.   
  
Dedication: For trixie who got me into Trowa/Duo in the first place. This one's her fault ^-~.   
  
**********   
  
Make Believe   
  
"Where do you wish you were right now?" Scattered pieces of moonlight fell blindly through the accidental clouds, filtering haphazardly through the cracked and damaged blinds hanging halfway off of their frame. A familiar hand was playing with his braid.   
  
"With you." The reply was low and melodious, even in tone, somehow too short. Duo laughed a little, nervously. Unease was apparent in both his taut, edgy movements and the rushed, anxious laughter sieving through his voice.   
  
"You're with me right now."   
  
"Yeah."   
  
Duo shifted his back so it wasn't supported by the grimy wall, and rearranged his meager body on the mattress so that his knees were bent and splayed to his sides, his long t-shirt just barely covering all it needed to, and he was facing Trowa, nearly in his lap. A quivering finger reached out of it's own accord to run along Trowa's jaw.   
  
"Well, where do you wish you were? I'll be there with you, just tell me where."   
  
Trowa thought for a moment, his eyes blank and somehow as distant as the hint of sunrise that was teasing on the fringes of the horizon. Duo stayed just as he was, knowing that Trowa had already grown accustomed to his casual invasions of personal space.   
  
"The beach."   
  
"I've never been on the beach." Duo's eyes were wide and shivering in their sockets, searching desperately through Trowa's to find some tiny light of hope or faith.   
  
"I have, once. I was young."   
  
"Yeah?"   
  
"Actually, it might have been a lake."   
  
Duo inched closer so that his nose was perched against his companion's. "It was still water."   
  
"But it wasn't warm. Or sandy. Or sunny. The water was like ice. I stood in it for a while."   
  
The skin of his nose must have been like the water, like ice against Trowa, trembling against him. He scooted his entire thin frame forward so that he was in Trowa's lap, his legs straddling Trowa's. He pressed his hands against the wall Trowa was leaning on to hold himself upright, to keep his slight weight from piling on Trowa. He felt hands steady around his waist, but wasn't aware of them. "I want to go with you to a real beach someday."   
  
"Okay."   
  
There was a certain decisiveness in his intonation that worried Duo, and he let more of the weight he was trying to sustain on his own fall upon Trowa's knees.   
  
"Yeah, you know where I wish I could be right now?" His eyes were insistent, frantic, and his chilled, sweaty palms slid down the marred wall until they came to rest on Trowa's shoulders.   
  
"Where?"   
  
"Well, okay, I've never really seen one of these places, but I saw a poster once, an advertisement, y'know? On a street corner. And ever since then I just wanted to go, one of those places with rides and games, one of those fun parks."   
  
Trowa nodded helplessly.   
  
"I've been to one, once. They hire circus performers sometimes."   
  
"Yeah, what's it like? Let me make believe."   
  
Trowa shrugged as well as he could, supporting Duo's upper body with his shoulders, trying to prop his own fatigued limbs as well against the wall. Duo's eyes, merely inches from his own, had darkened to a rich, velvety sapphire, an eerie hue that haunted his eyes when he was anxious and afraid.   
  
"There are a lot of people talking and laughing with their families. There are all kinds of smells and sounds that I hadn't heard before. I ate a funnel cake."   
  
Duo released a quaking sigh that swept Trowa's lips, his tepid breath against the chill air fashioning a brief haze that lingered for a moment against his skin, making the hair on his neck stand rigid.   
  
"What's a funnel cake?" His words fell cursory, nearly slurring together in the chilled air.   
  
"It's a sort of bread thing. You'd like it, probably. It had sugar on top."   
  
Duo's eyes flashed like electricity in a stormy midnight sky, the lightening that illuminated an entire room before departing in darkness. In his eyes, Trowa could see that his heart was about to burst. Duo buried his face in the tattered t-shirt fabric clothing Trowa's right shoulder.   
  
"I wanna do it, okay?"   
  
Trowa's arms struggled to bring both consolation and security and enfold Duo like a child's blanket.   
  
"What do you want to do?" Trowa's hands roamed along his back, clutching the lean body against his own. He tried to ignore the way his vertebrae and ribs protruded beneath the skin.   
  
"I-I wanna go there. With you. I want to go to a beach, and I want to see a fun park and eat a funnel cake." He shivered against Trowa's body, some of his trembling emerging from the hiccup-sobs trapped inside his chest.   
  
"Okay. We'll go to a park that's on the beach."   
  
"And we'll eat funnel cakes in the sand."   
  
"Right." Trowa clutched the middle of Duo's braid in one hand, pressing it to Duo's back, and the quivering fingers of his left hand wandered higher over the white t-shirt fabric. He met a damp, moist warmth at his shoulder blade. He dipped his smallest finger inside the tiny hole in the shirt, fingering the hollow flaw he found beneath his fingertips. Duo gasped, clinging forcefully to his shoulder.   
  
"We're gonna... gonna make this all the way... together, right?" Duo's voice and breath were ragged and gritty with an unambiguous shade of fear painting it.   
  
Trowa didn't answer for a time, insistent on clasping the frail body to his chest.   
  
"We're going to stay together." He looked at his left hand, discolored in a sickening shade of crimson, then at the flaccid form tilting vulnerably in his arms.   
  
********** 


End file.
